I don't know whether Bruce Hornsby is really into golf. Huey Lewis is really into golf. And Lewis and Hornsby have worked together. As musicians, I mean. And Hornsby's first big hugely successful group was Bruce Hornsby and the Range, who broke a hole in the sky in 1986 with their debut album The Way It Is and its inspiring title track.
Now, I cannot stress strongly enough that I do not know any of the persons, places, businesses or events in what follows. I am just a big silly goof who calls himself a monkey. For a living. The following is a work of the imagination.
I'm imagining Bruce Hornsby at a driving range in 1984. Big tall guy, Bruce is, minding his own business and hitting some golf balls, when a guy about a foot shorter with a receding hairline comes over, kicks over Bruce's bucket of balls and starts poking him in the chest with a forefinger and yelling at him:
"Yeah, so you think you're a hot-shot piano player, right? You think you're the best piano player around? Huh?" Poke! "Huh?!"
"Um... Hello?" Bruce says.
But the little bald guy -- relatively little. But so are most guys. Bruce is a huge freak -- is undeterred, he keeps right on poking and yelling: "You think you're hot shit, huh? College boy?'
"'College Boy'?!"
"You really think you're hot shit, huh? You know where Suzy's is? On route 9?"
I myself do not know of any establishment, past or present, called Suzy's, nor do I know the route of any road called Route 9. I'm just sitting here imaging this. That's all.
"Yeah," Bruce says, "I know where Suzy's is."
"You sure? I could draw you a map."
"I've been there several times."
"Well, if you can manage to be there Friday night, around 9 o'clock, then maybe we can see what kind of hot-shot you are. I'll be there, I'm the drummer and lead singer. Suzy's has a piano. I hear there even have it tuned now and then. ...unless you're gonna be too busy."
Bruce looks down and mumbles the admission: "No, I'm not going to be too busy."
And in fact -- that is to say: purely in my imagination -- Bruce is not too busy that Friday evening, and pretty soon he's the group's main lead singer, and two years later they're on MTV playing "The Way It Is" and making a lot of money -- or, at least, Bruce is making a lot of money -- unless they've got a manager who s terrible at his job, or ripping them of, or both. But at the very least, they let the drummer wear a fairly fancy-looking hat and suspenders during the filming of the video.
And for a variety of reasons which I'm too tired to goo into here and now, I suspect that Burce was makin' some bank, and that he was paying the band okay too. But I don't actually KNOW anything about it.
And maybe they were called Bruce Hornsby and the Range because they met at a driving range. Although there's no reason to believe that any of this is true or even coincidentally remotely close to what happened.
Buy digital music by Bruce Hornsby and the Range on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4hpnOZN
